City murder suspect found dead in Va.

A parolee wanted in the execution-style murders of two men last week at a Northwest Baltimore house was found dead of gunshot wounds yesterday in an Arlington, Va., motel room.

Police found a suicide note in the Pentagon City Motel room where Kevin Derand Flight's body was found, but preliminary indications are that he suffered two gunshot wounds to the head and another to the chest, Baltimore homicide detectives said.

Although investigators said it is unlikely that a person committing suicide would shoot himself three times, there is no evidence that anyone else was in the room with Flight.

"At this point, it looks more like a suicide, but until the investigation is over we can't say for sure," said Detective Tom Bell of the Arlington police department.

Flight, 28, who last lived in the 3800 block of W. Garrison Ave., was believed to have been one of three or four men who were involved in Saturday's killings, in which the victims were bound with duct tape before being shot. Police said they are still looking for the unidentified accomplices.

Detective Bell said Flight checked into the motel room alone and was last heard from about 4 p.m. Tuesday. Officers found his body about 3:30 a.m. after getting a report of gunshots at the motel.

Police recovered a small-caliber handgun from the room, Detective Bell said. An autopsy was to be conducted to determine whether the death was a suicide or a murder, he said.

Sam Ringgold, a Baltimore police spokesman, said two city detectives went to Arlington to confer with detectives there. Asked if detectives believed that Flight may have been murdered by his alleged accomplices in Saturday's incident, he said, "It's not our theory yet."

A Baltimore investigator who asked that his name be withheld called it "a strange coincidence" that Flight died within a day of his picture being shown in the media as a suspect in the killings.

"It raises the thought that he may have been on the run with others who decided it would be too risky to travel with him, since he had been identified," the investigator said.

Flight had been identified as one of the killers by a survivor of Saturday's attack, which occurred at an apartment in the 3300 block of Powhatan Ave. in Forest Park. The survivor, Bruce Belin, 33, of the 900 block of Walbrook Ave., is recovering from his gunshot wounds, police said.

Killed in the attacks were a cousin of Mr. Belin's, Terry Belin, 27, of the 4000 block of Bareva Road, and Keith Warren, 37, who lived in the apartment. Police said they are investigating the possibility that the shootings were tied to drugs.

Flight, an apprentice barber at a West North Avenue beauty salon, was on parole for a 1990 drug distribution conviction and had been assigned to home detention because he violated his parole by being arrested July 22 on a drug possession charge in New York City.

At the time of the killings, he was wearing his required electronic ankle bracelet, a home-detention monitoring device.

He had been charged in a warrant this week with two counts of first-degree murder, attempted murder and felony handgun violations.